An Ohio man will be arraigned April 2 in U.S. District Court in Cleveland for allegedly embezzling more than $436,000 from Taupa Lithuanian Credit Union.
Andrew Belzinskas, 45, of Lyndhurst, an eastern Cleveland suburb, is the seventh person to be charged in the $15 million fraud case that led to the insolvency of the Cleveland cooperative in July 2013.
He was indicted last week on one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and one count of bank fraud, according to court records.
Belzinskas worked full-time at Taupa Lithuanian Credit Union in various capacities from 1991 through 2004. He eventually was responsible for originating loans for Taupa for about 10 years. Even though he left his full time position in 2004, Belzinskas continued to work as a part time loan officer.
From 2007 through July 2013, Belzinskas conspired with others, including former president/CEO Alex Spirikaitis, to defraud the Cleveland cooperative.
Over those seven years, federal prosecutors alleged Belzinskas withdrew $436,026 from his personal accounts for which there were insufficient funds.
Spirikaitis made 19 fraudulent transfers to cover Belzinskas' overdrafts from other internal accounts, according to the indictment.
Federal prosecutors said the former loan officer did not follow established procedures for overdrafts and didn't submit credit applications or loan documents for the money he received from Spirikaitis to cover the overdrafts.
Spirikaitis was the central figure in the multi-million dollar fraud scheme. He was sentenced to more than 10 years in federal prison in December 2014.
He enabled five other co-conspirators to steal $15 million from a credit union that had only $23.6 million in assets. The co-conspirators, a bookkeeper, a teller and three business owners were convicted, sentenced and ordered to pay restitution to the NCUA.
Complete your profile to continue reading and get FREE access to CUTimes.com, part of your ALM digital membership.
Your access to unlimited CUTimes.com content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:
- Breaking credit union news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
- Weekly Shared Accounts podcast featuring exclusive interviews with industry leaders
- Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
- Critical coverage of the commercial real estate and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, GlobeSt.com and ThinkAdvisor.com
Already have an account? Sign In Now
© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
